Skip to main content
powershell/PSUseUTF8EncodingForHelpFile is a PSScriptAnalyzer diagnostic emitted by tally for PowerShell snippets embedded in Dockerfiles.
tally disables this rule by default because Dockerfile RUN bodies are inline strings, not files on disk with encoding metadata. Re-enable it with include = ["powershell/PSUseUTF8EncodingForHelpFile"] or by setting rules.powershell.PSUseUTF8EncodingForHelpFile.severity = "warning" in .tally.toml.

​
Description

Check that an about_ help file uses UTF-8 encoding. The filename must start with about_ and end with .help.txt. The rule uses the CurrentEncoding property of the StreamReader class to determine the encoding of the file.

​
How

For PowerShell commands that write to files, ensure that you set the encoding parameter to utf8, utf8BOM, or utf8NoBOM. When you create a help file using a text editor, ensure that the editor is configured to save the file in a UTF8 format. Consult the documentation for your text editor for instructions on how to save files with a specific encoding.

​
Further reading

For more information, see the following articles:

​
Source

This rule documentation is adapted from Microsoft’s PSScriptAnalyzer documentation for UseUTF8EncodingForHelpFile, licensed under CC BY 4.0.